Fake DruWriNi

I already planned about a week ago that I'd do this tonight.

It may be a Tradition for the_siobhan 'cause she's been doing this since 2007 but the Tradition for me is that I do it 'cause she keeps reminding me about it each year so I may as well follow her lead on the date too. :D

I'd also planned that what I try to do is catch up on some posts and comments I've wanted to write for ages but keep shoving off. I'll be pretty interested to see how that ends up going. Ha. One thing I will say is that I'm gonna be totally lazy with the "no typo corrections rule". I won't go back and fix any typo I didn't immediately notice and correct while streaming the words but I'm not going to fight myself not to fix something that's there 'cause I tend toward inaccurate typing naturally rather than 'cause I'm full of hootch. :)

NaDruWriNi 1: How did it get so late?

I must admit that when I imagined doing this I was starting around 6... since the sunset was scheduled for 5 this would have meant solid darkness. However, I was taken over by a great interest in a nice long hot bath with a book (a mildly annoying book that I was tempted to switch out for something else but the only other thing I'm reading right now is A Bit Dire and I'd rather Annoying over Dire for relaxing but happily the tale [sic] end of it was less annoying than most of what had gone before (or I was just in a better mood). While I had that bath I drank a pumpkin ale ice cream float, which was very nice. Lord knows if that counts but since it contributes to my overall alcohol count it may as well go down here.

What I'm actually drinking for the writing tonight are gimlets and I've just finished my first one (so I sort of feel like I should be shuffling my butt up to go get another since part of the rules are to "write while you drink" but instead I was researching while I drank). I was actually re-searching for something I read by Thoreau months ago that I'd wanted to write about at the time (hence what I'd said what the theme of the night: thing I want to write about but keep failing to make the time for). I read it just before going to sleep and had nothing with me to flag it so I could find it again but had thought that if I'm meant to find it again I will and I've taken a look now and I can't so there you have it.

Whatever this was I imagine it was on friendship (so I looked in this parts of Walden most relevant to that -- 'Visitors' and 'Where I Lived, And What I Lived For' -- as well as in the Journals and his last travel narrative since this is a collected works but no dice). This meant trying Google where I discovered he has both and essay and a poem on the subject but I'm not about to get into the former now and the idea of starting to sift through his quotes in hope of one that would jog me just seemed like a sneaky path of avoiding doing the writing I'd said I wanted to do for something fairly slight in return.

So we'll never know what I actually wanted to quote from Thoreau 'cause chances are there's not a bloody chance in hell I'll ever read this collected works again but luckily the poem has the same tuning fork tone as something else I'd *also* wanted to write about for ages which came about from my trying to figure out if the last line sang in Les Miserables before the 'Do You Hear the People Sing' final reprise ("And remember the truth that once was spoken: To love another person is to see the face of God") has any sort of origin (was it Once Spoken?) in the book itself (in the musical in French it's apparently [assuming you avoid the rabbit hole that presents itself there] "Et garde en toi les mots de ta prière: 'Qui aime son prochain est plus près de Dieu sur la terre'"). What I came up with back when I was poking around with was people point to chapters where Marius was interacting with Cosette (a different love... like people contest Thoreau's "friendship" in the comments on that poem). I didn't end up writing about that at the time since I'd decided that the most sensible thing to do would be to Read The Whole Damn Book itself (which is something I will do at some point... but not right now while I have a whole host of books to read In House). Unfortunately this means I also didn't bookmark *that* portion and so find I'll end up in the same re-searching trap looking for that now as I would looking for the Thoreau quote (is it any wonder I don't write here more? No, not it is not). :)

So, yes, what is in that poem is tuning fork resonant with what I'm now not about to go looking for from Hugo's novel, which is fine since we have the poem (and, well, also the line from the musical) to speak to instead.

Both of these things both speak to me (I think they're right) and sadden me (I feel like there are so few sturdy oaks in my life and God is distant, or, most recently, proven illusionary). I often think about the wisdom of wider society that holds that a funeral with few friends is a funeral for a sorry life indeed (which is what I feel my funeral would be since it remains a fact that the majority of my "friends" are ones and zeroes and so it has always been from the moment when they mostly stopped being trees and daisies). I, in fact, was thinking pretty clearly of this when I opted to dress up as A Professional Mourner this year (exactly who used to be needed at the funeral for the person with few friends).

( (The other motivation was the need for a super quick costume when it was announced we'd Do Halloween at work for The First Time Ever) )

And it really is the implication that bothers me in this (in contrast to the being alone part: I've always able to be alone. It's my natural state). The implication to me being that when it comes down to it I just live for myself, by myself because I cannot meaningfully connect with most others (When under kindred shape, like loves and hates / And a kindred nature, / Proclaim us to be mates). And it's not that I can't connected because I just want to serve myself because from the very beginning (we're talking first day at school beginning here) the people I were able to form some sort of friendship with were the ones who were served by the need for a friend: I'd become their friend while they had the need and stop when they no longer did with no more concern to this happening than I would have concern about two cars passing each other in their own lanes. These days I am concerned about that: these days I worry about being A Friend to Others In Need because of Need rather than being a friend because of Kindred Shape (though in all these cases there was a Kindred Shape: the Kindred Shape of Outcast-dom [with the difference being that they were distressed at being solo outcasts while I was OK with it but fine not to be for a while as long as they needed to not be solo]).

These days I've been trying quite hard not to fall into the comfortable pattern of isolating myself both to test that as a pattern and to see if it is untrue: to see if there are not Kindred Shapes out there for me. I'm doing OK at the former and terribly at the latter. I'm doing terribly at the latter because I'm not really trying because imagined Kindred Shapes that might be out there are a comfort while to try to find some and find none seems rather a horror (look for a face, find only a void). But, eventually, I'm going to have to try.

NaDruWriNi 2: 2nd Verse, Same as the First

(Drinking Gimlet #2). I tend to do that pretty darn human thing of announcing intent in the hopes it will inspire me to action purely from an Accountability perspective (but it never does and... worse! I know it never does! I actually know what I'm going to do and no number of need psychological tricks are going to change that). In this case what I annouced was that I wasn't just going to spend tonight writing posts I'd wanted to write but that I'd also use it to write comments I'd wanted to write but now the time is here I find I'm balking for No Good Reason At All.

I'm balking 'cause that irritating little voice in my head is telling me that it's Not Nice to go write comments on other people's journals long after the fact (using myself as a measure this is a raftload of crap: I'm perfectly happy to get a new comment no matter how old the post), or as part of an Event (there might be more to this one: if I felt like the point of the comment was to Write Something For The Event... though in this case it actually wouldn't: I have the posts I'd want to comment on already in mind where they've been here for varying lengths of time [some on the scale of months]), or drunkenly (some of these posts I'd want to comment on shouldn't really be taken lightly and so to do so purposefully while moving away from 'mindful' also seems pretty darn wrong). So, yes, writing comments tonight is right out: gonna have to stick to the posts.

(Relevant aside: this is one of the worst things for me connecting with others... this tendency to assume offence in the other party based on my action [so the poor solution is to not act] when there's probably no offense at all and if there was it means we're just not likely to connect well ever so no harm for us to both learn that).

And, ha, I knew I'd said at some point that there was a bunch of stuff I'd wanted to write about but kept pushiing off. When was that? A. Last NaDruWriNi of course! (And check out the theme synergy: lols). So, yes, this means next up will be Happiness and the DSM-V, because, nope, I'd never forgot that I'd owed that (I'd only forgotten that I'd owed it for more than a year!).

NaDruWriNi 3: Echoing Postscripts

Since I linked to last year's NaDruWriNi post I figured (before dragging my butt up for gimlet 3) I may as well read it while it was open (which then meant reading what it linked to... which then meant reading what that linked to). Here's an excerpt of what it linked to:

"That is the moral lesson that is slit into every Jewish male’s penis. Be wary. Be sceptical. Even those closest to you can harm you. That moral lesson is translated into a general inquisitorial stance that teaches Jews to query everything and not take received wisdom on authority. Even the ultra-orthodox are taught to query and probe the meaning of text."

I've continued to be haunted (that's always the word so whenever I think of this state of existence I keep ruining this song for myself) by the idea of trust lately and so find this a pertinent place to note that since Oct. 24th I've kept one of the daily messages from The Word of the Day in my inbox (the word is 'girn') just 'cause the quote at the bottom of it (all Words of the Day come with quotes) to remind me to read the source and see if there's Help to be had there. The quote is:

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."